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It's not weird at all. The point is that Uber should only be disabling these safety features on public roads if their technology is superior. If their technol

It's not weird at all. The point is that Uber should only be disabling these safety features on public roads if their technology is superior. If their technology is less safe, and in this case it appears to be that it is, they shouldn't be driving around on public roads. Keep it to test tracks. Volvo's system would have either stopped or slowed enough to make this crash non-fatal. That's worth pointing out. There is no point in Uber testing technology that is worse than what you can buy any number of cars today.

FussyZeus 9y ago
...playing Devil's Advocate, as GP said, it's common practice when testing any self driving tech to disable these features on the cars in question so your automated system isn't fighting with another set of automated systems trying to control the same vehicle. That sounds far more unsafe and unpredictable than just disabling the built in ones. Personally I think it's naive and unreasonable to think we're going to get totally safe and rock solid self-driving tech without at least a few coffins worth of people who gave their lives to show us how it could go wrong. There isn't one safety system in existence that wasn't built on top of a pile of corpses.
- polack 9y ago
  I've had a car with automatic breaking system for a while now and my experience is that they do not kick in easily. Had to test it with a friend that throw an inflatable mattress in front of the car to make it react. It should not be too hard to make these systems co-exist. If one of the systems says break then the car will break. The few times the car breaks when it really didn't need to should be an acceptable side-effect during testing.
  - tzakrajs 9y ago
    Exactly. People are acting like these self-driving programs are so fragile that they can't handle a second system rarely taking control.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    Except this is a prototype, not a final product. Were a self driving car being made for public use, there would not be a pre-existing safety system to bypass or modify; it would be built in, or at the very least, the car would be delivered for modification with that system already removed. If you had a firewall in your network, for example, that had both a firewall system that you configured, and alongside it, a firewall configured by a third party with "best practices" in mind, that would be frustrating to configure and test because you'd never know for sure if it was a configuration you didn't setup correctly, or if it was this other firewall that you couldn't operate interfering with whatever it was you were doing. When designing things like this, step 1 is you remove variables that could change the behavior of the device in question without you knowing why it did. I'm sure once completed, a self driving car system could well be made to interface with the safety systems otherwise present, or could be designed in such a way where they wouldn't conflict. When you're in the thick of building that system, however, an additional (and by your comment, not exactly predictable) system to contend with, that you have no access to, is going to be a pain in the rear.
    - polack 9y ago
      No, you do NOT remove security systems when trying out an untested system. If anything you should add MORE. Again, the stock auto break systems rarely engage unless there is real danger. By that I mean last second breaking, absolute last second. Most people can drive a lifetime without ever having them engaged. If you cant program a self driving car that can handle that then you're in the wrong business.

FussyZeus 9y ago

...playing Devil's Advocate, as GP said, it's common practice when testing any self driving tech to disable these features on the cars in question so your automated system isn't fighting with another set of automated systems trying to control the same vehicle. That sounds far more unsafe and unpredictable than just disabling the built in ones. Personally I think it's naive and unreasonable to think we're going to get totally safe and rock solid self-driving tech without at least a few coffins worth of people who gave their lives to show us how it could go wrong. There isn't one safety system in existence that wasn't built on top of a pile of corpses.

polack 9y ago
I've had a car with automatic breaking system for a while now and my experience is that they do not kick in easily. Had to test it with a friend that throw an inflatable mattress in front of the car to make it react. It should not be too hard to make these systems co-exist. If one of the systems says break then the car will break. The few times the car breaks when it really didn't need to should be an acceptable side-effect during testing.
- tzakrajs 9y ago
  Exactly. People are acting like these self-driving programs are so fragile that they can't handle a second system rarely taking control.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  Except this is a prototype, not a final product. Were a self driving car being made for public use, there would not be a pre-existing safety system to bypass or modify; it would be built in, or at the very least, the car would be delivered for modification with that system already removed. If you had a firewall in your network, for example, that had both a firewall system that you configured, and alongside it, a firewall configured by a third party with "best practices" in mind, that would be frustrating to configure and test because you'd never know for sure if it was a configuration you didn't setup correctly, or if it was this other firewall that you couldn't operate interfering with whatever it was you were doing. When designing things like this, step 1 is you remove variables that could change the behavior of the device in question without you knowing why it did. I'm sure once completed, a self driving car system could well be made to interface with the safety systems otherwise present, or could be designed in such a way where they wouldn't conflict. When you're in the thick of building that system, however, an additional (and by your comment, not exactly predictable) system to contend with, that you have no access to, is going to be a pain in the rear.
  - polack 9y ago
    No, you do NOT remove security systems when trying out an untested system. If anything you should add MORE. Again, the stock auto break systems rarely engage unless there is real danger. By that I mean last second breaking, absolute last second. Most people can drive a lifetime without ever having them engaged. If you cant program a self driving car that can handle that then you're in the wrong business.